System for Displaying an Optical Image

ABSTRACT

A system ( 1 ) for displaying an optical image ( 2 ) by means of unmanned autonomous vehicles. Each vehicle has a display for displaying at least a part of the image ( 2 ) by way of stored or transmitted image information as well as a control unit ( 9 ). The control unit ( 9 ) is configured to control the image information and to move the vehicle using a drive unit ( 11 ) by means of stored or transmitted positon information. At least two vehicles are configured as land crafts ( 5 ), wherein the displays ( 3 ) of the land crafts ( 5 ) are oriented in parallel to a substantially horizontal image plane ( 6 ) and configured as displays ( 3 ) accessible by a human person.

The invention relates to a system for displaying an optical image bymeans of unmanned autonomous vehicles, wherein each vehicle has adisplay for displaying at least a part of the image by means of storedor transmitted image information as well as a control unit, wherein thecontrol unit is configured to control the image information and to movethe vehicle using a drive unit by means of stored or transmittedposition information.

From prior art there have been known systems, which enable thepresentation of an image in airspace by means of so-called “drones”,which are also called “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)”. The presentationof such images is of particular interest in the course of sport eventsor comparable public or private events in.

U.S. Pat. No. 9,415,869 B1 discloses a system having a plurality ofUAVs, which each support a display vertically oriented in theoperational position and may form a combined larger display by means ofthe coordinated formation of these displays. The displays as well as thesupport construction thereof have to be especially light-weight and,consequently, delicate, as the load capacity of the UAVs is low. Thedisadvantage with this system is that the displays may only be viewed,for example, in a sports stadium, from one side at the same time andthat this system will only allow for an interaction with persons, forexample artists or presenters, in a rather limited way.

The invention is based on the task to provide a system for displaying anoptical image, which at least reduces the above disadvantages and/orlimitations.

According to the invention, this task is solved by a system, wherein atleast two vehicles are configured as land crafts, wherein the displaysof the land crafts in the operational position are oriented in parallelto a substantially horizontal image plane and are configured as displaysaccessible by a human person.

The system according to the invention is advantageously able to presentthe optical image by means of the displays substantially horizontallynear the ground, whereby, for example, the image may be viewed on theplaying field of a sports stadium from all sides at the same time and isclearly better visible from the spectator tiers. Furthermore, thedisplays may be accessed by persons, for example by artists orpresenters, allowing for an improved and increased interaction withthese persons.

In a preferred embodiment the displays of the land crafts have thegeometrical form of an equilateral polygon and may be moved by means ofthe land crafts and the control units into at least one substantiallyseamlessly parquetted stage assembly, in which stage assembly thedisplays form at least one accessible and/or walk-on stage. Thus,advantageously, one or several movable and variable interactive stagesmay be provided, which may be accessed and walked on by persons andartists.

The displays usefully have in the image plane the geometrical form of aregular hexagon, an equilateral triangle and/or a rhomb. Thesegeometrical forms allow for a good and simple seamless parquetting.

The term “parquetting” is known to those skilled in the art as “tiling”,“paving” or “scrap-free blanking”.

In a further preferred embodiment the system has a control station,which is configured to move the vehicles and/or to control the imageinformation, wherein the control units and/or the control station is/areconfigured to control the image information on the basis of the positioninformation of the associated vehicle and/or on the basis of theposition information of the further vehicles. The image information,which is displayed by a display, may thus be adjusted to the respectiveposition or to an image position of the respective vehicle.

The position information and the image information are preferablytemporally variable information, wherein the control units and/or thecontrol station is/are configured to control the image informationsubstantially in real time by way of the variation of the positioninformation. In this way, on the one hand side, there may be displayedfilms and/or animations by the displays and, on the other side, thisimage information may be adjusted substantially in real time to thecurrent position of the vehicle in a scheduled manner, for example byway of a predefined path the vehicle follows, or in an unscheduledmanner, for example if the vehicle has to carry out an obstacleavoidance manoeuvre.

The display is usefully configured as an integral part of a housing ofthe land craft and/or to be weather-proof.

A land craft, preferably all land crafts, is/are usefully configured asrobot vehicle(s) and/or with mecanum wheels.

At least one land craft, preferably all land crafts, usefully has/haveorientation means for adjusting the orientation of the display to thedisplay plane.

In a preferred embodiment at least one vehicle is configured as anunmanned aerial vehicle, in particular a UAV/drone, a balloon or anairship, and/or at least one vehicle is configured as an unmanned watercraft, in particular a water drone, a submarine drone or a marine buoy.

In a further preferred embodiment the vehicles form at least one swarmflight formation, wherein the control units and/or the control stationis/are configured to move the vehicles in a swarm flight formation, inparticular by means of swarm flight formation units of the vehicles.

Further exemplary embodiments of the invention are described by way ofthe following figures, wherein in a schematic depiction:

FIG. 1 shows an inventive system according to a first exemplaryembodiment.

FIG. 2 shows an inventive land craft of the system according to FIG. 1.

FIG. 3A to 3F show in a bird's eye view examples of stage assemblieshaving seamless parquetting with a system according to the invention.

FIG. 1 shows in a schematic depiction a system 1 according to a firstexemplary embodiment of the invention for providing an optical image 2.The image 2 is presented by means of displays 3 by way of stored ortransmitted image information. The displays 3 may be composed of anumber of image points/pixels and may be based on at least one of thefollowing technologies: LCD, LED, OLED, Quantum Dot, “In-Glass”. Eachdisplay/all displays 3 may present the entire image 2, which means thatall displays 3 present the same, namely the image 2. Alternatively, alldisplays 3 may together present the image 2, for example, by eachdisplay 3 presenting a particular part of the image 2, wherein the sumof all parts, this is of all displays 3, forms the entire image 2.Alternatively and/or additionally, two or several displays 3 may presenta particular part of the image 2 and/or different images 2.

Furthermore, a part of the image 2, as depicted as an example in FIG. 1,may be presented in addition by means of light elements 4, for example,by semi-permeable screens illuminated by light sources (LED, LASER).

The above/further possibilities of presentation of an image in the senseof this invention are known to those skilled in the art.

The displays 3 and the light elements 4 are supported by unmannedautonomous vehicles and positioned and/or moved within space by way ofstored or transmitted position information. The system 1 according toFIG. 1 has three unmanned autonomous vehicles, which are configured asland crafts 5. Such a land craft 5 is schematically detailed in FIG. 2.The displays 3 of the land crafts 5 are oriented in the operationalposition in parallel to a substantially horizontal image plane 6.Furthermore, the displays 3 of the land crafts 5 may be walked on by ahuman person, whereby each display 3 or a stage assembly 20 of severaldisplays 3 may form an accessible and/or walk-on stage 7. The displays 3may be configured as an integral part of a housing 14 of the land craft5 and/or to be weather-proof. The land craft 5 may be configured as anautonomously driving robot vehicle and/or with mecanum wheels 17,whereby the robot vehicle may autonomously move in all directions,without having to take into account a “turning circle”. The land craft 5may further have orientation means, for example pneumatic pistons forlifting and lowering (not depicted), in order to adjust the orientationof the displays 3 to the image plane 6, whereby, for example, aninclined ground may be compensated for.

Furthermore, the system 1 according to FIG. 1 has three unmannedautonomous aerial vehicles, so-called UAVs 8. The UAVs 8 may bemulticopters, for example “octocopters” having eight rotor units or“quadcopters” having four rotor units, wherein there is possiblesubstantially any number of rotor units. Alternatively or additionally,the system 1 may have at least one further vehicle from the followinglist: an unmanned aerial vehicle, in particular a balloon or an airship,or an unmanned water craft, in particular a water drone, a submarinedrone or a marine buoy. All these different vehicles of the system 1 mayeach have one or several displays, light elements or other units forsupporting the entire optical image by the system 1.

The vehicles, this is the land crafts 5 and the UAVs 8, comprise acontrol unit 9 for controlling the image information and for moving thevehicle using a drive unit 11, for example an electric motor, by way ofthe position information. The control unit 9 may be composed of severalcomponents, wherein each component is configured to execute a function.For storing the position information and/or the image information, thevehicle and/or the control unit 9 may have a storage unit (notdepicted). For receiving the position information and/or the imageinformation, the vehicle and/the control unit 9 may have a communicationunit 12. For determining and/communicating the position information, thevehicle and/or the control unit 9 may have at least one position sensor13.

The at least one position sensor 13 may be at least one from thefollowing list: inertial measuring unit for path, distance and/orposition, acceleration sensor, position sensor, capacitive sensor forpath, distance and/or position, laser sensor for path, distance and/orposition, confocal sensor system for path, distance and/or position,magneto-inductive distance sensor, hall effect sensor for position, GPSreceiver or receiver for a comparable satellite-based navigation system,for example Galileo, GLONASS or Beidou/Compass.

The system 1 according to FIG. 1 comprises a ground-based controlstation 14 having a communication unit 15. By means of the controlstation 14, the vehicles, this is the land crafts 5 and the UAVs 8, maybe moved, and the presentation of the respective image information ofthe displays 3 may be controlled. Thereby, the control station 14communicates via the communication units 12 and 15 with the controlunits 9. The control station 14 may comprise at least one from thefollowing list: PC, laptop, tablet computer and smart phone. The controlstation 14 may have at least one user interface, wherein a user (notdepicted) may control the vehicles and/or the image via the userinterface.

A user may, for example via the user interface, manually start theexecution of a presentation of the image 2. Subsequently, the executionof the presentation of the image 2 is realized automatically. Theposition information and the image information are processedautomatically, for example, by means of the control units 9 and/or thecontrol station 14 by way of a programme code.

The control units 9 and/or the control station 14 is/are configured tomove the vehicles according to the position information, for example theimage position 16 a of a land craft 5 in FIG. 1, and to present at therespective image positions, for example at the image position 16 a, viathe display 3 the respective image information. The image informationand the position information are calculated by the control station 14and/or the control units 9 and optionally transmitted via thecommunication units 12 and 15.

Alternatively or additionally, a part of or the entire image informationand/or position information may be stored in the storage unit andprocessed by the control units 9. If all image information and/orposition information are stored in the storage unit of the vehicles,there is optionally no control station 14 required.

In FIG. 1, the image positions, for example 16 a and 16 b, are based onrelative coordinates, which are defined along three virtual spatial axesX, Y and Z. This is of advantage in particular in the case of indoorapplications within buildings. A vehicle is moved on the basis of theposition information to an image position, for example 16 a or 16 b,which is calculated by the control station 14, the control unit 9 and/orthe position sensor 13, for example an inertial measuring unit. In thefollowing, the vehicle may be moved along a spatial or temporal sequenceof image positions, which may be based on a predetermined route or apredetermined “path”.

Alternatively, the position information may be absolute coordinates suchas, e.g., “Global Positioning System (GPS)”—based coordinates, forexample, data in the GPS Exchange Format (GPX). The data in the GPXformat may contain geodata, this is the geographic coordinate latitude,longitude and elevation. Alternatively, the data may also be based onGalileo, GLONASS, Beidou/Compass or any other satellite-based navigationand/or time system or on a local or building-based navigation system.For this purpose, the vehicle may use a position sensor 13 of the typementioned above in order to always compare the current position or imageposition of the vehicle with the predefined position or image position.

The image position may be spatially static, which may mean that theposition information during the presentation of the image 2 or after allvehicles have reached their image position, respectively, contains onlystatic information. In this way, the vehicles maintain their imageposition during the entire presentation of the image 2. Alternatively,the position information may have dynamic information, which may meanthat one, several or all image position/s varies/vary during thepresentation of the image 2. Alternatively, the position information mayhave static and dynamic information.

The image information may have only static information, which may meanthat the displays 3 display the same image 2, for example a picture, orthe same part of the image 2 during the entire presentation of the image2. Alternatively, the image 2 may have dynamic information, for examplea video or an animation. The displays 3 may then display, for example, aparticular part of the image 2 or a particular frame at a particularpoint of time. Alternatively, the image 2 may be a combination of one orseveral images with one or several videos.

The displayed content of one, several or all displays 3 may depend onthe image position or may be adjusted thereto, which is why thedisplayed content of a display 3 may be based on the positioninformation of the associated vehicle and/or the position information ofthe further vehicles of the system 1. For example, the displayed contentof one, several or all displays 3 may be respectively only a particularpart of the image 2, wherein this particular part, which is displayed bythe display(s) 3, depends on the current image position(s). Thus it mayappear that a land craft 5, for example, “moves through the image”,wherein the display 3 of the land craft 5 apparently “moves through theimage plane 6” and respectively shows that part of the image 2, whichcurrently correlates with the image position.

The image information and the position information may be calculatedand/or transmitted substantially in real time, whereby there is ensureda smooth communication and wherein optionally the information regardingan image position and/or regarding the displayed part of the image 2 maybe updated at any given point of time, for example by way of a scheduledor unscheduled variation of the image position.

The control station 14 and/or the control units 9 may be additionallyconfigured to transmit time code signals via the communication units 12and/or 15 in order to carry out a time code synchronization of the imageinformation and/or of the position information. This is of particularimportance if the image information and the position informationcomprise a combination of dynamic position information and dynamic imageinformation. Based on the actual time code signal, the respectivecontrol unit 9 decides, which image information, for example which frameof the video data, will be displayed on the display 3. In addition,there may be realized a time code synchronization between the individualvehicles, in particular if there is no control station 14.Alternatively, a time code synchronization may be obtained by readingthe time codes from a global time code synchronization source, forexample GPS or DGPS, which is available to all vehicles. Alternatively,there may be obtained a time code synchronization by all vehicles beingmanually synchronized at the beginning.

In an alternative embodiment the vehicles form at least one swarm flightformation. For this purpose, the vehicles may have a swarm flightformation control unit (not depicted) and position sensors 13, inparticular a plurality of distance sensors, wherein the position sensors13 permanently detect the distance to the neighbouring vehiclessubstantially in real time. These swarm flight formation control unitsmay communicate with the control units 9 of the vehicles, or they may beintegrated into these. The control station 14 and/or the control units 9may then update substantially in real time the position informationand/or the image information via feedback of the position sensors 14 andmay move the vehicles according to swarm flight formation intelligence.Those skilled in the art will know the basic principles of swarm flightformation intelligence.

The displays 3 of the land crafts 5 have preferably the geometrical formof an equilateral polygon. By means of the land crafts 5 and the controlunits 9, at least two of these displays 3 may be moved into onesubstantially seamlessly parquetted image assembly 10, in which imageassembly 10 the displays 3 form an accessible and/or walk-on stage 7.Examples of such stage assemblies 10 having a seamless parquetting,which may be obtained using the land crafts 5 of a system according tothe invention, are depicted in the FIGS. 3A to 3F. Thereby, the displays3 have in the image plane 6 the geometrical form of an equilateraltriangle 3 a, of a regular hexagon 3 b, of a rhomb 3 c, of a square 3 dand/or of a rectangle 3 e. The displays 3 a, 3 b, 3 c, 3 d and/or 3 eform a stage 7 that may be accessed/walked on by a person, which isoriented substantially horizontally and in parallel to the image plane6. Alternatively or additionally, there may be formed several movableand variable interactive stages 7, which may, for example, be accessedor walked on by persons and artists, wherein the image 2 interacts withthe persons, it “reacts” to the movements thereof, for example.

There is to be further noted that a system according to the inventionmay also be used for other applications, for example rescue missions.Unmanned land crafts 5 and/or UAVs 8 may be configured by means of adisplay 3 and/or a light means 4 for the signalling or informationdisplay for persons in danger and/or injured. Unmanned water vehicles(not depicted) may form, by means of displays 3 according to theinvention, which are movable according to the above description into anaccessible platform, a rescue platform on water in order to offer atemporary floating life raft for persons seeking help and/or beinginjured.

1. A system for displaying an optical image by means of unmannedautonomous vehicles, wherein each vehicle has a display for displayingat least a part of the image by way of stored or transmitted imageinformation as well as a control unit, wherein the control unit isconfigured to control the image information and to move the vehicleusing a drive unit by means of stored or transmitted positioninformation, characterized in that at least two vehicles are configuredas land crafts, wherein the displays of the land crafts in theoperational position are oriented in parallel to a substantiallyhorizontal image plane and configured as displays accessible by a humanperson.
 2. A system according to claim 1, wherein the displays of theland crafts have the geometrical form of an equilateral polygon and maybe moved by means of the land crafts and the control units into at leastone substantially seamlessly parquetted stage assembly, in which stageassembly the displays form at least one accessible and/or walk-on stage.3. A system according to claim 1, wherein the displays in the imageplane have the geometrical form of a regular hexagon, an equilateraltriangle and/or a rhomb.
 4. A system according to claim 1, wherein thesystem has a control station, which is configured to move the vehiclesand/or to control the image information, wherein the control unitsand/or the control station is/are configured to control the imageinformation on the basis of the position information of the associatedvehicle and/or on the basis of the position information of the furthervehicles.
 5. A system according to claim 4, wherein the positioninformation and the image information are temporally variableinformation, wherein the control units and/or the control station is/areconfigured to control the image information substantially in real timeby way of the variation of the position information.
 6. A systemaccording to claim 1, wherein the display is an integral part of ahousing of the land craft and/or configured to be weather-proof.
 7. Asystem according to claim 1, wherein at least one land craft, preferablyall land crafts, is/are configured as robot vehicle/s and/or havingmecanum wheels.
 8. A system according to claim 1, wherein at least oneland craft, preferably all land crafts, has/have orientation means foradjusting the orientation of the displays to the image plane.
 9. Asystem according to claim 1, wherein at least one vehicle is configuredas an unmanned aerial vehicle, in particular a UAV/drone, a balloon oran airship, and/or at least one vehicle is configured as an unmannedwater craft, in particular a water drone, a submarine drone or a marinebuoy.
 10. A system according to claim 4, wherein the vehicles form atleast one swarm flight formation, wherein the control units and/or thecontrol station is/are configured to move the vehicles in a swarm flightformation, in particular by means of the swarm flight formation controlunits of the vehicles.